by Ronie Kendig
“C&C?”
“Command and control.”
“Why not just have the worm send back the intel?” Lawe asked.
“Because,” Mercy spoke up, meeting Cell’s gaze, “most of the servers he’s got his furry little friend digging around in are very sensitive.”
“If the Neiothen really are a super-army, then intel about them—and the identities of those involved—is clearly TS-1 clearance or above,” Cell said, “so there are most definitely measures in place to alert them any time that information is accessed or leaves their servers. Which means it’s a freakin’ flaming arrow straight into the heart of our bunker.”
“Director!” The barked call rang through the bunker, pulling everyone’s attention to a Marine. “You and Admiral Braun are needed immediately.”
Iliescu stood, glancing at the team. “Stay close. We aren’t finished.”
CHAPTER 4
REAPER HEADQUARTERS, MARYLAND
Four hours later, the deputy director and admiral returned with grim expressions, and the team regrouped at the main hub table.
“MI6 relayed a video interview with Wafiyy Ibn Sarsour.” He nodded to the wall, and Braun hit the lights as the video went live. “There is about an hour’s worth of footage here, but for our purposes, we’re focusing on this section.”
The video looked to have been shot in a hospital and showed a screen split in three—the larger portion focusing on the killer, the upper right zoomed in on his eyes, and the lower right displaying a series of vitals, including heart rate.
“Why did you kill the royals and the king?”
Eyes hooded, Wafiyy shook his head. “I didn’t . . . I-I don’t know.”
“But you did, you put the poison in the drink.”
“Yes.” His eyes sharpened as if he remembered something. “It was an order.”
“From who, Corporal?”
“I—” His gaze went distant again. “I don’t know.”
“You had the poison.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It was in your sleeve.”
He frowned. Sweat beaded his brow, and a busted lip added to the macabre scene. “I . . . know. But I don’t know why.”
“Was this your mission? Kill the royals and then kill yourself?”
“No! Why would I? I was getting married.”
“What does Harbah mean, Wafiyy?”
Again that sharpened gaze, as if life came back into focus. “My code name. The initiation code—no, activation—” He squeezed his eyes and growled in pain. The vitals went crazy. “Stop them. You have to.”
“The codes—”
“Yes,” he said around clenched teeth, as if fighting something, “two codes—one for activation. One for initiation. They activate us. Then initiate our mission.”
“What mission?”
“I . . . I don’t”—another long growl—“I don’t—” He screamed. “Make it stop.”
Lights flared in the hub once more, and the screen died, but a buzzing over that name tremored at the back of Leif’s mind.
“He goes on like that for a while,” Braun said. “They didn’t get much after that, but they’re still trying. Some think he’s just messing with the interviewers because half of what he says doesn’t make sense.”
Peyton shifted. “So . . . they’re what, operators? Spies?”
“Assassins.” Defiance spread across Iskra’s olive complexion, indicating the strength of the woman who’d been a hired killer for years. “That is what you are suggesting, yes?”
The director nodded. “It is.”
“However,” Admiral Braun said, “do not think that we can simply go through our phone book of spies and find these operators. The names in the Book of the Wars are not directly tied to active operators or operative call signs to our knowledge. From what we can tell, the Neiothen are sleeper agents. That would explain a lot, since Ibn Sarsour wasn’t a spy. He was British SAS with an impeccable record and was, at the time of the murders, assigned to security detail for a British royal family whose daughter was marrying a Saudi prince. Since the killings of his brother and father, that prince is now poised to become king.”
Lawe grunted. “And nobody finds that suspicious?”
“Everyone finds it suspicious,” Dru countered. “But the kid nearly wet his pants watching his father die. There’s no sign he was aware of or a party to the murders.”
“Maybe he was sympathetic but not active.” Saito glanced around the room. “He wanted to rule but didn’t have a way, so ArC stepped in and said—here, we’ll kill them if you’ll be our lapdog.”
“We thought the same thing,” Braun said, “but we have probed deeply into the prince’s connections, banking, and business dealings. There is nothing linking him to Ciro Veratti or any other known ArC higher-ups.”
“So what are you saying?” Leif asked, frowning.
After Braun nodded to her, Mercy sat up and worked her laptop. “Through witness testimony and videos from the wedding, we know a voice spoke over the secure communications used by the security personnel on-site.” She hit a key.
“Six, you’re needed by the king.”
“Copy. Moving in.”
“Harbah. Two. One. Five. Initiate rise. Rise. Rise.”
“Who is this? Clear the line!”
Buzzing hit the back of Leif’s head. “Harbah.” Finally connecting the dots, he rammed his gaze into Cell’s. “That was in the book.”
Cell nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
“So like Iskra said, we’re hunting assassins,” Leif thought out loud. “Assassins who, according to that prophecy, will turn the lands to blood and be a plague.”
“Sounds a lot like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Culver noted, stroking his red beard, something he did while deep in thought or concerned. Or both. “Wasn’t one of them Death?”
“The others were Conquest, War, and Famine.” Leif roughed a hand over the back of his neck.
“But remember,” Mercy said, angling in, pointing at them with a stylus, “the Neiothen are tied to the Armageddon Coalition—ArC—who want to beat Armageddon by taking over the world before the biblical prophecy can be fulfilled.”
“Doesn’t that just blow your mind, thinking they can outrace God?” Culver clicked his tongue.
“To them,” Baddar said, “the Christian Bible is wrong. That is why they push to do this, to prove God does not exist.”
“Well, that. And rule the world,” Lawe said. “And turn the land bloody.”
Leif was ready to get down to business. “You said you had more names—did you connect them?”
“We do, and I did,” Cell said. “The next one listed in the Book of the Wars is Hami. Which, thanks to the Harbah recording, I identified.”
“How did that help?”
“Took a shot in the dark,” Cell admitted. “The numbers seemed significant, so I played with a series of numbers and code names. Hami came up pretty fast, so we’re hoping that’s a good omen. The worm is still searching for the others.”
“Hami is the call sign for Qiang Kurofuji,” Admiral Braun announced, seemingly annoyed with Cell’s long-winded explanation.
“Japanese?” Saito said, sitting a little straighter.
“Actually,” Cell said, “Kurofuji was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Chinese immigrant parents.”
“Then why is his name Japanese?” Saito asked.
Cell shrugged. “Dude. I have no idea. Just is. Maybe his mom had an affair with some Japanese guy.”
“Moving on.” Braun splashed a photo of their target on the wall. It was a standard military photo of a Marine in front of the American flag. “Kurofuji was Marine Force Recon. Got out last year and went private contract. At this time, we only want to bring him in to talk.”
The obvious prickled at the back of Leif’s neck. “Contract company? Do they partner with U.S. forces?”
“They do.”
“So have one of our guys bring him in.�
�
“Already tried,” Dru said with a huff. “He and his team were embedded in Africa. One night, he up and vanished. Nobody’s seen him since. I want Reaper heading over there to find them. Find something that will prove or disprove this Neiothen theory.”
“Find them?” Leif asked.
“Right.” Cell eyeballed his tablet. “The second name we were able to pull from the USB scans was Arvi—”
“You got all that since the Saudi killing?” Leif wasn’t buying it.
“Just needed the key to unlock the secrets.” Cell didn’t meet his gaze. “Um, so—Arvi. We tied that to a heavily redacted Navy file. In fact, when I snagged this off the system, something went wonky.”
“Wonky?”
“Wonky,” Cell confirmed with a nod. “And now we can’t get the file to pull up again.” He tossed the device onto the table. “We may have exposed ourselves.”
Lawe muttered a curse.
Cell nodded toward the wall. “This is the only part we could get. They sent a scrambler through to blur everything, but we were able to save this. Last name, Gilliam. First name,” Cell continued, “as you can see, got butchered before we could barricade the file from their scrambler. The middle letters are too blurred to be decipherable.”
It was Leif’s turn to curse, but he bit it back, waiting. Staring at the writing on the wall: CAR . . . N.
“Carsen Gilliam,” he said, unwilling to believe what this meant. “I worked with him. Good guy.”
Dru snapped his attention to Mercy, who had already lurched toward a keyboard. She quickly typed in the name and waited for the results.
Leif’s mind refused to connect these dots. “No way. No way I accept Carsen is a part of the Neiothen.”
“That’s just it,” Braun said. “All the intelligence shared since this event speaks to the fact that everyone who knew Wafiyy Ibn Sarsour called him fiercely loyal and patriotic. Friends, battle buddies, and family said he loved his country and work. That he’d never do something like this.”
“Yet,” Lawe said, “we have proof that he did.”
Mercy looked up from her keyboard. “As of 1700 hours yesterday, Carsen Gilliam is MIA from the FOB in Afghanistan from which his unit was operating.”
“Should we be concerned,” Lawe asked, glancing around, “that these two are both American?” He folded his arms.
“Yes”—Dru pitched his file on the table—“be concerned. But as to nationalities, we have no way of predicting that. However, a pattern does seem to be developing. What we know is that they have skills. Right now, the best thing we can do is bring them in.”
“Rules of engagement, sir?” Saito asked.
“Bring them in—at all costs.”
CHAPTER 5
REAPER HEADQUARTERS, MARYLAND
Trust was a rare commodity right now. And he had a gap to bridge, so Leif turned to Iskra. “Where would you start this hunt? Tell me, and that’s where we’ll go.”
“Actually,” she said, “I think . . . I must stay here. For Taissia.”
He frowned, sensing this was about more than her daughter. “You’re assigned to the team.”
“I know. But she must come first until I get things sorted.” Iskra sounded like she needed to convince herself. “Taissia needs me. I have no one to look after her when I am gone.”
“I do,” Leif said. “Canyon and Dani might let her sleep over. I bet my nieces and nephews would be good buddies for her.”
Iskra hesitated, turning her head so that her long dark hair slid over her shoulder, as if that inky color was her grief spilling over. Killing him with the hurt and the anger roiling through her eyes.
But she hadn’t rejected the idea. “I’ll make a call,” he offered, hoping to win back some of the brownie points he’d lost going incommunicado. “Okay?”
She still hesitated.
“I can see you want to go on the mission. Don’t do this just because you’re mad at me.”
Indignation flared through her irises. “I am doing this because Taissia depends on me for her safety. I am all she has, and she is all I have.” Her breath tremored as her meaning wedged between them like a concrete wall. “But I also do this because of you. If you cannot show me simple consideration and respect by letting me know you are alive—that you have returned from wherever you went—how can I trust you with my child?”
Catching her hand, he swallowed his pride. “I get it.” But things were seriously whacked, and that void couldn’t handle both of them. “I had to do this—”
“On your own.” She flung off his grip. “I made fine progress finding my brother before this team. Clearly, I need to take care of this and my daughter. On my own.”
“Iskra, pl—”
“Runt?” Peyton Devine came out of the hub with intention in her stride, but she slowed and glanced at them. “Sorry. When you have a minute.”
But Iskra was halfway up the steps out of the bunker.
Leif deflated, sliding a hand down the back of his neck. He forced his gaze to Devine. “What d’you need?”
“First,” she said, arching her brow toward the stairs, “you need to fix that.”
“I was in the middle of trying to when you interrupted.” He huffed and started back to the hub. “So. What’s up?”
“I want to go with you to look for Gilliam.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I know his sister.”
At his station, he turned back to her. “Carsen?” He dug through his mental file on his Navy buddy. “He never said anything about a sibling.”
Devine shifted on her feet. “I’m not certain it’s the same Gilliam, but there was a Sienna Gilliam in my unit. She had a twin brother.”
“Let’s find out.” Leif motioned her to follow. “So you two were friends?”
“Kind of,” she said with a lazy shrug. “If you count enemies as friends.”
“Seriously?” Surprise lit through what he knew of the winsome Peyton Devine, former NFL cheerleader-turned-Army-cultural-support-unit-member cum sniper. One of the best assets in the field. “I thought enemies were against your religion or something.”
“Yeah, well, the ones I haven’t put a round through are few and far between.” She pursed her lips and shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
He angled into the door of an office just off the hub. “Cell?”
“Right here, Usurper.”
“That’s getting old.”
“Just like you.”
Leif smirked, abandoning the banter. “Can you confirm Carsen Gilliam had a sister?”
“I . . .” Cell frowned. “Uh, lemme check, see if any next of kin is listed.” He scanned the files. “Not seeing anything, but like I said, they scrambled the file, so what I have is more than half redacted.”
“What about her record?” Devine suggested. “Check Sienna Gilliam.”
Cell’s fingers flew over the keyboard. He grunted. Frowned. “Not seeing . . . She listed next of kin as Brandon Gilliam, father.” He scanned the data. “Wait—here.” He chuckled. “You’d be surprised what you can learn about people by looking at their life insurance beneficiary. Listed as Carsen Gilliam.”
Devine seemed pained.
Dru stalked into the hub and spotted them. “Made some calls. Fort Lee is expecting you. Get over there and find out what you can about Gilliam. I’m working on getting you to Africa to hunt down Kurofuji.”
“Understood,” Leif said, noting the team huddling up. “Devine thinks she might know his sister, so I’m taking her with me.”
“Director?” Mercy said. “I just found a condo in New York City under Kurofuji’s name. We should send a team to look around.”
“How’d he afford that on grunt pay?” Lawe asked.
“Good question. Find out,” Dru said. “Mercy, go with Culver and Lawe to check that out.”
“Man, isn’t this what the DIA’s for, investigating?” Culver asked.
“We need this intel retrieved befo
re anyone’s the wiser or it’s redacted. Neither of these men has done anything wrong other than vanish.”
“That vanishing thing is a problem, though,” Cell said. “Why would they vanish if they were innocent?”
“Roger that.” Leif thumbed toward the door. “Baddar, Cell, Devine, let’s head out.”
***
Iskra hadn’t meant to lie to Leif, but he wouldn’t like the methods she needed to use to get answers. But it was . . . tricky. After picking up Taissia from school, she returned to their apartment. Once Taissia had a snack and cartoons playing, Iskra retrieved her laptop. She might have shed the persona of Viorica, but she still had her contacts and skills. While Leif looked for the missing soldiers, she would find her brother.
Mitre was out there somewhere. And now she had three more names to work with. She pulled up the picture of the last time they were together before she was sent to Hristoff. A snapshot outside a church. He’d had his arm around her, their grins infectious and wild. Back then, she thought they would be together forever. That he would always be there to protect her. Instead, she never saw Mitre again.
Enhancing the image, she studied the oh-so-familiar scar on his right hand, between his thumb and index finger. A scratch of three lines, two parallel, one capping them off. N for Neiothen. Just as Bogdashka and Vasily had suggested. Just as she’d told Leif. Though they listened to her words, she had been dismissed.
But there was someone who would take her seriously. Someone who had the necessary resources. Iskra lifted her phone from the counter. Stared at it, knowing if she did this, if she made this call, Leif would never forgive her. It wasn’t every day she climbed into bed—figuratively—with the enemy of the man she loved.
She bristled. Why was she worried about Leif? He had not cared about leaving her and Taissia while he hunted for answers. He thought she did not know where he went, but there was a reason Viorica had become known worldwide. Something happened to Leif a few years ago. He said he had lost six months of his life and was determined to find them.